Economists are predicting that high unemployment will last at least through next year's elections. Has the government done all it can? Should Americans resign themselves to continued suffering or are there short-term solutions?

FROM THIS EPISODE

Economists are predicting that high unemployment will last at least through next year's elections. Has the government done all it can? Should Americans resign themselves to continued suffering or are there short-term solutions? Also, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says NATO's becoming irrelevant, and Alabama outdoes Arizona in cracking down on illegal immigration.

Banner image: Protesters gather outside of Senator Charles Schumer's office to demand more jobs on in New York City. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Alabama has gone Arizona more than one better when it comes to cracking down on illegal immigration. Republican Governor Robert Bentley has signed House Bill 56, making it illegal to knowingly give an undocumented alien a ride. Schools will have to determine the immigration status of children starting in kindergarten. Police will be required to ask the status of anybody they stop based on "reasonable suspicion." While sponsors call it a "jobs-creation bill for Americans," critics say its "outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional. Mark Jones, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Rice University, is a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy.

In his farewell address to NATO in Brussels today, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates had harsh words for alliance members that rely on the US instead of doing their own defense spending, at a time when the US has increasing problems of its own. Peter Spiegel is Brussels Bureau Chief for the Financial Times.

US unemployment is back up to 9.1 percent and 45 percent of the jobless have been out of work for more than six months, 30 percent for more than a year. Joblessness has become chronically high on both sides of the Atlantic, but "policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue. The more they fail to do anything, the more they convince themselves there's nothing they could do." That's according to Nobel-Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who insists it's time for governments to take action. Is stimulus spending the answer? What about the deficit? Are both Democrats and Republicans failing to govern? In the meantime, what are the consequences of chronic unemployment? Will the US go the way of Spain? We talk with Krugman and others.